First off I'd like to say that I am new to Prince of Persia modding as well as this community.

I have been editing levels in Roomshaker for about a week now and I've decided I'd like to try and customize the visuals by changing palettes. I understand that using the default colormaps is the simplest way to alter the game's visual files; however, I would really like to use my own palettes.

I have followed the guide posted here: http://www.popot.org/documentation.php? ... PoP1Imagesand follow along fine until it gets to the point of converting my custom palette from .gpl to .pal using gpl2jascpal. I have the program downloaded and tried following the instructions exactly as stated, but I'm still not sure exactly what commands to use in command prompt to run my .gpl palette through gpl2jascpal. Any help would be greatly appreciate!

If you find out which are the exact steps, you could write them in a post.Then I will add them to the document, for future readers.(I'm not on Windows myself.)

That document is a bit outdated.It should also mention SDLPoP and MININIM as alternatives.And it could mention the Windows batch file (and GNU/Linux shell script) that can be used to simplify exporting/importing with PR.

Wow! Thanks Norbert, I appreciate your reply and continued support for this community (which I'm seeing more and more of every day). I found SDLPoP since making this post and editing the open source files for the in game images is as simple as it gets, but I would still like to end up with a traditional DOS executable so that I don't have to rely on playing the game through SDLPoP. Is there anyway to use the SDLPoP files I've edited to make a prince.exe that I can run in DOS?

PS. I'm attempting Prince of Wateria and although I previously thought I knew some techniques and tricks, this stuff is pretty far beyond me. I must applaud you for the visual alterations too, the mod looks really good!

edit: I also unpacked your wateria files and noticed that most of the in-game images are organized in folders within the main folders for images in those groups (ex. "kid" folder contains separate folders "clipping", "deaths","hanging" etc. and the files within these are all named appropriately). This seems like a godsend when editing the images in order to better organize but I imagine you have to reference them differently in order for them to load properly in the game? I'm probably in way over my head at this point, but I realized in SDLPoP that changing the image file names causes them not to load when the game is run so obviously something is referencing those names (ex. "res51" is the title image). Any insight on this? Thanks.

PretzelGalaxian wrote:Is there anyway to use the SDLPoP files I've edited to make a prince.exe that I can run in DOS?

Assuming the files you've edited are images, you could use PR and an image manipulation program with a palette editor to get them into relevant DAT files. But it would just be a painful chore, and in the end using them with a DOS executable only means players need DOSBox and can't use various useful SDLPoP features.

I realize now that with programs like SDLPoP and Mininim, DOSBox isn't really necessary.

I'm still confused about how you ended up with the resources for Wateria so nicely organized and how you were able to finish with an executable that I was able to run in DOSBox in order to play your game.

PretzelGalaxian wrote:I realize now that with programs like SDLPoP and Mininim, DOSBox isn't really necessary.

SDLPoP and MININIM are native executables for Windows and GNU/Linux.They are not DOS executables, so no DOS emulation (and thus no DOSBox) is required.

PretzelGalaxian wrote:I'm still confused about how you ended up with the resources for Wateria so nicely organized and how you were able to finish with an executable that I was able to run in DOSBox in order to play your game.

PR extracts DAT files into directories, and vice versa.Its package includes a resources.xml file that includes the file names used for BMP, MID and other resources.The organization you see when extracting Prince of Wateria DAT files with PR is the organization PR always uses.If you PR efforts didn't get you that organization, use the batch file.

I'm not exactly sure how to use the batch file, but since I'm using SDLPoP now I shouldn't need to extract any resources since it doesn't use DAT files, correct? I guess at this point I'm just curious about your process for Prince of Wateria as well as still being confused about how you ended up with the "1.exe" and "2.exe" files to run that game (which I was able to play through DOSBox).

PretzelGalaxian wrote:I'm not exactly sure how to use the batch file, but since I'm using SDLPoP now I shouldn't need to extract any resources since it doesn't use DAT files, correct?

If you also want to edit levels, you'll need to add LEVELS.DAT in SDLPoP's main directory.But, yes, you don't need any other DAT files.

PretzelGalaxian wrote:I guess at this point I'm just curious about your process for Prince of Wateria as well as still being confused about how you ended up with the "1.exe" and "2.exe" files to run that game (which I was able to play through DOSBox).

The file 2.EXE is the PRINCE.EXE executable for DOS. It uses the DAT files just like it uses the DAT files for the original game. I've only modified the DAT files. And the DAT files were modified by exporting and importing their resources with PR. The only exception being LEVELS.DAT, that I modified with apoplexy. If you still don't understand certain things, I suggest you reply with a post in which you describe exactly what you think all the files and programs are doing. This will allow me to complement and correct your assumptions.

Through the exporting of files of a standard PoP1 folder I've come to assume what a few of the DAT files do. Some of them are obviously storing resources like images and music/sound files and some of them contain BIN files (which I don't understand at all). I guess the prince.exe file runs the game by loading the levels from LEVELS.DAT and referencing the various DAT files to access resources to render. I also see PAL files and recognize that these are palettes used to map colors of the relevant image files but I'm not sure why they belong in the folders/DAT files they do or how the game loads them for the corresponding images (I stopped attempting to understand this part after finding SDLPoP. Editing PNG files with GIMP removes the need for PAL files, I guess?) I'm sure there are a few things that I haven't mentioned because either I really don't understand them or don't even realize they're there.

At this point, I feel like I have most of the understanding necessary to build the mods I want to make, but having a better understanding of how everything fits together and works would be ideal. Also, SDLPoP really works great for allowing someone with my level of computer understanding to modify PoP, but it still feels like I'm missing something? I just want to learn as much as I can to help streamline my modding experience.

Norbert, I am still interested in potentially using this method for editing palettes for various reasons so I'm attempting this step again. Does my gpl2jascpal.exe have to be in certain directory? I have it downloaded but I'm not sure where to put it and I tried using the command that I've quoted above and it didn't work.

Norbert, I am still interested in potentially using this method for editing palettes for various reasons so I'm attempting this step again. Does my gpl2jascpal.exe have to be in certain directory? I have it downloaded but I'm not sure where to put it and I tried using the command that I've quoted above and it didn't work.

Did you replace "...path..." with the actual path to where gpl2jascpal.exe is located on your system?To make things easier, you can move it to C:\gpl2jascpal.exe and then run "C:\gpl2jascpal.exe filename.gpl" (without quotes) in the directory where filename.gpl is located.Or, you know, move them both into C:\, then go to C:\ and run "gpl2jascpal filename.gpl".If it doesn't work, you should get some kind of error message.You can paste the message in a post.

Norbert wrote:Or, you know, move them both into C:\, then go to C:\ and run "gpl2jascpal filename.gpl".If it doesn't work, you should get some kind of error message.You can paste the message in a post.

"[FAILED] Could not read pink.gpl: No such file or directory!"

This is the error I received. Both gpl2jascpal.exe and pink.gpl (the palette I'm attempting to convert) are in C:\ and I ran the command exactly as you said. Does this mean the palette file is not viable for conversion for whatever reason?